Youth, Optimism Are Their Prime Assets : Economy: Jobs for him are hard to find; she faces a layoff, but they haven’t given up on the future.

If they weren’t young enough to still see a future, if they weren’t so optimistic by nature, Andy and Kelly Jenkins of San Pedro might be in a panic.

Two years ago, Andy lost his job as graphic artist for a publishing company. And though it was a blow, the hard part came later, when he tried to start his own business just as the nation’s recession was setting in.

Even then, he and Kelly were getting by. His work was sporadic, but she had her $30,000-a-year job as band and orchestra director at Wilmington Junior High School.

But last month, Kelly was told that her job will be eliminated by budget cuts in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Now, five years after they were married, Andy and Kelly, both 27, are facing the sort of financial crisis that never seemed possible. Their problems began before the economy turned sour, but they have increased ever since.

“Money is the only thing we ever fight about,” says Kelly, “and we’re fighting about it a lot more now.”

The couple say they attempt to face each day with the sort of pluck and positive outlook they learned as kids growing up in solid, middle-class families in Cheyenne, Wyo.

“That has a lot to do with it, the fact that we both come from pretty stable backgrounds,” says Andy, who has known Kelly since high school.

Still, Andy says, their financial predicament has sometimes shaken their optimism. “We like to keep a positive attitude and just work straight ahead,” he says. “But maybe we should start worrying and start looking a little farther ahead.”

Looking back would be too depressing.

Seven years ago, Andy moved to the South Bay to take a job with a publishing company specializing in youth-oriented magazines on bicycling and skateboarding. By the time Kelly finished college and joined him, Andy was making $30,000 a year in that job and another $10,000 each year in free-lance work for other companies needing graphic-arts work.

But in March, 1989, Andy was laid off by the publishing company, when it closed the magazine he was working on.

For a time, Andy says, he managed to keep busy with designs and other artwork commissioned by some of his private clients. “The money wasn’t quite what I wanted, but I was getting a lot of work,” he says.

That changed a year ago, when the economy started claiming more and more companies, Andy says. “The people I would rely on for regular work stopped calling. They were doing the work in-house.”

As the recession dragged on, he says, more and more companies were struggling to keep their publications. And for Andy, that meant less and less work.

“The economy definitely had an impact,” Andy says. “It came down to the point of whether a kid can afford a new bike. And if he can’t, advertisers aren’t going to advertise.”

With many of his former clients closing publications or canceling free-lance work, Andy says, 1990 was a financial bust. All last year, he figures, he took home about $8,000, after deducting expenses for typesetting, film work, photocopying and other costs associated with his profession.

“I thought the free-lance market would be more lucrative,” he says. “I didn’t think it would be a problem.”

Determined to make it on his own, Andy did not apply for a full-time office job. Instead, he scrambled for free-lance work, with Kelly’s salary as a schoolteacher keeping the couple afloat.

But slowly, in ways they are only now beginning to realize, Andy and Kelly were already swimming against the financial tide.

By last summer, the bills were adding up, including Kelly’s $1,500-a-semester tuition at USC, where she is pursuing a master’s degree. But the bills were still manageable enough for the couple to buy a $264,000 home in San Pedro. With a big down payment provided by Andy’s mom, the couple bought the 1913 three-bedroom, two-bath, Cape Cod-style house last August, renting out part of the house to friends for $600 a month.

But soon, with Andy not working enough and the roommates deciding to find their own place, the $1,500 a month mortgage payments became a stretch. And with all their income suddenly devoted to house payments, their other expenses were put on credit cards.

“It seems to have crept up on us,” Kelly says.

When they last checked, the couple owed nearly $13,000 on credit cards for items that could not be avoided. Sometimes it was car repairs. Other times, the house. Too often, it was for a cash advance just to keep them going.

Looking back, Andy says: “We were used to having more money before and didn’t stop spending as quickly as we should have.”

But he and Kelly are quick to add that the debts were the result of living as they had, not living better than they should have.

“We weren’t lavish,” Kelly says.

These days, they say, they are watching every expense. No trips. No new clothes. A movie once in a while. Dinner almost always at home. “A lot of macaroni-and-cheese,” says Kelly. “With tuna on a good night.”

“We don’t live like poor people,” she says. “Yet.”

Andy and Kelly still believe things will be all right. Maybe the school district will decide at the last minute that her job won’t be cut. Or maybe, after his months of work on a prototype for a new youth magazine, the New York publishing house that commissioned the prototype will deem it a success.

But those are what-if’s. And after what they’ve been through the past year, Andy and Kelly say they aren’t banking on anything.

So now, with the same determination that got them through last year, they are looking anew at their options.

For Andy, that means giving up his dream of his own business and getting a reliable, full-time job. Maybe at an advertising agency or an art studio, he says.

For Kelly, it means thinking about something other than teaching, since school districts besides Los Angeles also have been laying off employees. One possibility, Kelly says, is going to work aboard a cruise ship, playing saxophone in a show band or a lounge combo.

Like Andy, Kelly hasn’t started sending out resumes. Both are waiting, she says, to see if her job will actually be gone; to see if Andy’s magazine proposal will fly.

And if the worst happens, she says, then the serious job search will start.

“Whatever I can get,” she says. “I guess it will come to that.”